


Where ever there is water there is someone drowning

by fleer



Category: We Are What We Are (2013)
Genre: Cannibalism, Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical Violence, Character Study, Gen, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Torture, POV Second Person, Protective Siblings, Sibling Bonding
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-07-09
Updated: 2017-07-09
Packaged: 2018-11-30 01:20:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 495
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11453022
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fleer/pseuds/fleer
Summary: Marge watches you from the window, her cigarette between wrinkled fingers.Later, she will smell stale, like bread left to mold over. You’ll be thankful for her anyway.





	1. Warm Hearth Cold Heart

_“We don’t even ask for happiness, just a little less pain.”_  
\- Charles Bukowski, “Letters to William Packard” July 1985

 

Your father is broken. He tempts fate with his meanness, his fickle sneer, and you wonder how he has not yet learned that fate always wins. Mere mortals are no match for a universe of stubbornness.  


He reads to you from the book, not The Good Book but another, darker shade of paper. “The sweet unblemished skin-“ and you rock your brother in your arms as if this were a lullaby. As if this were something soothing to fall into dreams with. His mouth sucks rhythmically at his thumb and you pry it from between his lips.  


Red. Gnawed and drool-slick, pooling in the divots of teethmarks. You think about animals in traps, how they chew off their own limbs to escape.  
To be free.  


You wonder how long they run with the taste of blood in their mouths.


	2. God Bless, Mom. God Bless Mom.

When you think of your mother you think of flowers in a mason jar on the windowsill. You think of a calloused hand brushing your curly hair off your temple. You think, now, of blood. The bright deep red of a fresh wound, or brackish brown of deeper problems; her remedy a hand wave, a “shh” as you try to speak. 

You think of a dark pit with a locked door, your nails catching at mud and mortar. 

You think of fear and kisses on the forehead. The way she waved to you in the rain, her hood up and making her a faceless beast through the window. The glass an uneven surface that distorted the tail lights of the truck. Two pinpricks of red enveloped in the dark. 

Maybe she knew. The way she had stood there just a moment too long, hand raised as if signaling you to stop. But no. She wouldn’t have. She couldn’t have. 

She loved you too much to wither.


	3. She is hard to break, like stone.

When you think of your mother you think of your sister, her shoulders squared, her stance stubborn. The way she holds her mouth and her hands, the lint on the sleeve of her dress as she pushes it up to her elbows. She is ready, she thinks, and you follow her like a lamb. 

(Ah, but you’re not the lamb, are you?) 

You have always followed her. Your hand balled in her skirt, your feet still untrustworthy beneath you. Now you grab her elbow, feel skin and cotton, the soft line of hemming thread. 

“Iris,” you say, your voice an echo through the years. 

She doesn’t turn to you but she does stop and you see her mouth quiver. 

“It must be done,” she tells you and that is your father. His voice coming from her mouth, as if she were a puppet on strings and you grip her arm tighter. She has always been, if anything, herself and he will not take that from her. He can’t. 

Please. 

He can’t.

**Author's Note:**

> Title by Robert Bly
> 
> Movie subject matter warnings apply.  
> (The cannibalism will most likely not be written in vivid detail. I'll add a warning if it pops up later.)
> 
> Update Schedule: Unknown


End file.
